


The Man With Two Hearts

by AMX004_Qubeley



Category: Doctor Who, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 10:52:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5372642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMX004_Qubeley/pseuds/AMX004_Qubeley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A renegade Time Lord encounters a homicidal flower and a kindly goat lady.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man With Two Hearts

Flowey had found an easy mark this morning. The human who'd fallen today was old—ancient, decrepit, wizened, whatever word you'd want to use—and if the fall wasn't enough to kill him, a good scare would probably do the trick.

“Howdy!” He put on his biggest, brightest smile. The old man staggered backward in surprise. “The name's Flowey. Flowey the flower! You're ne—”

“Flowey?” The old man raised an eyebrow.

“That's right! You're new here, a—”

 _“Flowey_ the _flower?”_

Flowey bobbed up and down in agreement. “Yup! You're new here, aren't'cha?”

The old man lowered his head and shook it sadly. “Flowey. Flowey the flower. I'm so sorry, the kids at school must have been merciless.”

Flowey's smile shrank by a few molars. No, this wasn't going the way it was supposed to at all. Taken aback, he responded, almost without thinking, “No, I had a private tutor. I _was_ a prince, after all…”

The old man's eyes brightened. “Oh! _Royalty!”_ He made a sweeping bow. “And is this your kingdom, my liege? Have I fallen into,” he cast his gaze around the cavern, “the Kingdom of the Flower People?” He looked down, and with a shudder as if he'd been jolted by an electric shock, stepped off of the patch of golden flowers he'd fallen onto. “Oh dear, I hope I haven't been treading on your subjects…”

Flowey giggled the cutesiest and most saccharine giggle he could muster at this doddering oaf. “You're a funny one! I think you'll fit right in down here. Why don't I explain to you how things work around here?”

“Thank you so much for the offer, Flowery—”

_“Flowey—”_

“—Yes, Flowery, but I'm afraid I can't stay long: my ship's right up there…” the old man pointed upwards, toward the hole in the ceiling he'd fallen through, “and if I don't get back there soon, she'll be rather cross with me… And who's going to feed Mr. Whiskers…?”

Flowey's smile vanished completely. “Oh. I'm so sorry, um…”

“Doctor.”

“What kind of a name is 'Doctor'?”

“What kind of a name is 'Flowey'?”

“Anyway, _Doctor,_ I'm afraid nobody can leave the Underground. You could be here for a very long time… ” His face morphed into the grotesque death's head mask he'd found perfectly adequate for scaring the life out of people. _“…or a very short time!”_

A ring of white pellets hovered in the air around the bemused Doctor. He usually called them “friendliness pellets”, but realized that, since the Doctor had thrown him off his routine, he hadn't managed to introduce the concept of LOVE to the poor man.

Oh, well.

He wasn't going to be around for very long.

The Doctor eyed the encroaching pellets. “All the years, all the travels and trials and tribulations, and this is how it ends. Death by fish flakes.”

_“That's a good name… I think I'll use it on my NEXT victim…”_

The Doctor bent down. The pellets shifted downward, remaining at the old man's eye level and continuing to advance toward him. “Hate to dash your hopes, Flowey, but I don't think you'll be having any more victims in your future…” He started fishing around in the pocket of his coat. Flowey wasn't concerned. How many humans had uselessly threatened him with their weapons before his attacks cut through them?

The old man pulled out a small flask with an aerosol sprayer on the top and pointed it at the flower. “This is a very potent herbicide,” he snarled. “Call off your fish flakes or the Flower Kingdom will be minus a king.”

The pellets didn't stop. _“I am so much more than just any old plant, human.”_

The Doctor stood up again, keeping his spray bottle trained on Flowey. His trigger finger twitched. The pellets followed him. “And I'm not just any old human. If you kill me here I'll just get back up again.” He crouched down again. The pellets followed him. The Doctor repeated the motions, faster and faster. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. The pellets began to lag behind his movements and eventually became completely out of sync. Eventually, they crossed harmlessly just over the tips of old man's gray hair.

Flowey stared at the Doctor. No one had ever done that. No one had ever even _thought_ to do that.

The Doctor wheezed with exertion, but didn't seem to be tired or worn out by the calisthenics. He pointed the spray bottle at Flowey. “If I were you, Flowey, I'd scram.”

Flowey did what anybody with a self-preserving cell in their body would do, and dug his way underground and scurried away through the soil. As he made like the Doctor had asked and _scrammed,_ he could faintly hear the old man chuckling. _“_ _It was only water,”_ he was saying to himself. _“I got it to keep Mr. Whiskers from climbing onto the TARDIS console…”_

–

“What a miserable creature, tormenting such a poor, innocent…” Toriel began her usual lines, only to find that the horrid flower who usually tormented new arrivals was nowhere to be seen. An old human man was wandering around the cavern with a spray bottle in one hand and a strange device in the other, staring up at the hole in the ceiling which occasionally let in a little bit of sunlight. “Hello?”

The old man noticed her. “Oh! Hello!” He stowed the spray bottle as well as the device in his coat pockets. “Perhaps you can help me out here. I'm trying to get…” he pointed at the hole in the ceiling. “…up there. Please. I've got a cat up there and you know cats, they're useless all by themselves…”

That poor cat. Toriel wished she could help the human, but… “I'm so sorry, er…?”

“I haven't introduced myself. I'm the Doctor.” He stuck out his hand. He was a very tall and thin man, just a few inches shorter than Toriel herself, and while nowhere _near_ emaciated, he was practically skeletal. She couldn't remember the last time she'd met a human she didn't have to bend down in front of just to look them in the eye.

Toriel took the Doctor's hand in her great white-furred paw. “Greetings. It is a pleasure to meet you, Doctor… _Just_ Doctor? Not Tom, or Peter, or David, or anything like that?”

 _“Just_ the Doctor.”

“And I am Toriel, caretaker of the Ruins. Doctor, I bid you welcome t—”

“'Caretaker'?”

“Yes, er, I…” Toriel felt unusually flustered under the Doctor's almost-accusatory glare.

“You might want to do something about your homicidal plant problem. Now, I don't suppose you have a very tall ladder lying around…” The Doctor walked past her.

“Be careful, Doctor, there are traps—”

But by the time Toriel had turned around the Doctor had already solved one puzzle and had moved onto the next room.

Toriel followed the old man as he navigated through each puzzle and trap with ease, narrating to Toriel the entire time. She'd tried explaining to him that she was quite familiar with the solutions already, but he'd ignored her. “Now, there must be a ladder in here somewhere… how else would it have gotten built…?”

“I'm sorry, Doctor, but…”

“Oh, don't tell me you don't have ladders in the Flower Kingdom.”

“Doctor, there is…” She felt horrible telling him. “There is no escape from the Underground.”

The Doctor gestured irritably with his hands. “Oh, I suppose there's some sort of _magical barrier_ keeping you trapped down here.”

“There is.”

The Doctor rubbed his hands together. “Oh, joy! I've never seen _real_ magic before. I mean, there were the ghosts, once, but those weren't _real_ ghosts, those were recordings being used by an alien warlord to signal its armies to attack the Earth… But this barrier, what's it made of? How does it let people pass through from one side but not the other?”

“I am sorry, Doctor. I suppose the Barrier is made of, well… magic.”

The Doctor was unusually quiet as he sat cross-legged on the ground and traced doodles in the dirt, occasionally talking to himself. “If the barrier allows entry but disallows exits, then perhaps reversing the polarity…” he muttered. “No, that never works…” Toriel felt unusually out of her element. Why couldn't it have been another child? She'd gotten used to looking after children. Strange old men, on the other hand…

Toriel cleared her throat. “I have quite a library in my house, Doctor. Perhaps I have some books that could help you…?”

The Doctor shot up. “Books! Yes! Bring me to your books.” He grinned with manic fervor. “Lead the way, Torvus!”

“Toriel.”

“Lovely name. I must try to remember it.”

Toriel led the Doctor through the rest of the ruins. She attempted to make small talk and learn more about her new guest, but all she managed to learn was that he liked butterscotch and cinnamon about equally (but, if asked to choose, would choose cinnamon). Occasionally he'd rattle off some random factoid about some planet with a silly name she had never heard of. (“Have you really been to other planets?” she'd asked him, and he'd gone on and on about the adventures he'd had in his spaceship—the TARDIS, he'd called it) She didn't pry, out of politeness, but from his habit of spouting out exposition he seemed to be a man in desperate need of an audience. Toriel could tell. She knew loneliness when she saw it.

She told him about her people's history, but like him, chose not to delve much into her personal history.

“With all your people trapped underground for so long, I'm surprised you haven't run into the Silurians.”

“The who?”

“No, The Who don't play very many subterranean venues.”

Toriel looked at the Doctor, nonplussed.

“The Who, they're a human rock band… Of course, you wouldn't have heard of them.”

Toriel smiled. “Have you heard of Shyren? No? That's okay, she's pretty… _underground.”_ She giggled.

“Would you like to hear a _real_ kneeslapper? Let me tell you about the tenor who tried out for _La Forza del Destino_ and thought he was auditioning for the title role…”

“Okay, tell me.”

“That's the joke.”

Toriel mulled it over. “The force… of destiny… Oh!” She cackled. “Doctor, do you know why _La Bohème_ is a tenor's favorite opera?”

“Because it ends with a tenor shouting…” he flung out his arms dramatically. “'MEEEEEE, MEEEEEE'!” The Doctor laughed. “You know human operas?”

“We do occasionally receive some… elements of human culture.” Toriel didn't want to tell him that those elements came from the garbage which sometimes made its way underground. She had a book of the collected works of Shakespeare in her house which she had tried, over the years, to de-smell as best she could. She very much hoped he wouldn't notice were he to find that particular tome.

–

The guest bedroom in Toriel's house didn't quite have a bed big enough for Mister Stick Insect, and so Toriel (somewhat reluctantly) allowed him the use of the room “under renovations”. He pored through her entire library in a matter of days. By the end, every single book on her shelves had been relocated to a pile on that bedroom. He'd filled up her chalkboard with more advanced mathematics than she'd ever seen before too many times to count, erasing and writing new equations on a nearly hourly basis. The palimpsest of useless and abandoned formulas the Doctor wrote and then partially erased and wrote on top of eventually grew so prominent that his new scrawlings were even more difficult to make out. “You have some wonderful literature,” he'd told her over dinner. “I must warn you, though, your copy of Shakespeare is a little mildewy.”

“I do hope it has been some help to you, Doctor.” Toriel had little hope the Doctor would be able to divine a way through the barrier, but seeing his manic scribblings made the ordeal seem… almost possible. There was some sort of superhuman intellect behind those mad eyes of his.

“Well, not the Shakespeare, no, but it provides me welcome respite when I need it.” The Doctor twirled his fork absentmindedly in the slice of the snail pie Toriel had cut for him. “Poor Mr. Whiskers. He's probably run out of dry food by now, but he's a smart creature. Might have learned to work the can opener by now…”

“You keep a cat on your ship?”

“The last animal I had was much easier to take care of, on account of being a dog, and also a robot. I suppose I could count Frobisher, but that would be exceptionally rude (after all, he wasn't always a penguin)…”

“How is your research coming along? I don't wish to talk about work over dinner, but there is so little to do here in the ruins…”

“Not good. Your books don't go anywhere near into enough depth. It's like trying to… thread a quantum-locked hyperstring through a naked singularity… using instructions from a high school physics textbook.” He spat the words out in frustration. “If I had a thousand years, I could brute-force an answer, but I'd rather not wait that long. I don't think your people would, either.”

Toriel's spirits fell. She hadn't raised them very high, true, but it pained her all the same. “I am sorry, Doctor.”

“Your scientific literature, while commendably vast for a hobbyist, is insufficient.”

The unspoken words were ones Toriel had heard too many times before. _I have to go, Toriel._

“You have scientists, am I right? Researchers? Mystical sages? Past the ruins, that is. In the nicer parts of town.”

_Past the ruins. How do I leave the ruins?_

“If I could just pick their brains, I'd be standing on much more solid ground here.”

_When can I leave the ruins?_

“I'll take a magic eight-ball if that's all I can get.”

_I want to go home._

“Is something wrong, Toriel? You look like you've seen a ghost.”

Toriel realized she'd been holding her fork up to her mouth for nearly a minute while the ghosts of her would-be children ran across her mind, in one floppy lop-ear and out the other. She set the fork down on her plate. “I am sorry, Doctor.” She turned her head down. She couldn't look him in the eye. “Nobody… nobody leaves the ruins.”

“Excuse me?”

“I trust your intelligence, Doctor. I think you can find a way through the barrier from here.” Part of her believed she was telling the truth. “But if you leave this place… you will never find a solution.”

The Doctor planted his hands on the table. “And why is that, Toriel?” he growled. “What's waiting out there that you're so afraid of?”

Toriel couldn't speak. There wasn't a drop of moisture in her mouth. “S… s… s-seven…”

“Seven…”

“…souls. _Human souls.”_ Toriel could barely force the words past the lump in her throat.

The Doctor's eyes hardened. “A blood sacrifice. Of course. Par for the course for magic.”

“We… we have six.” Toriel sniffed. Here come the waterworks. She was going to start crying in front of this strange old man she'd only known for a handful of days.

“Six. And how do you know that?”

“Because all of those six people… Those children… Every single one of them…” her voice warbled. Trying to speak through a vale of tears—it always felt as though you were fighting to keep your body from falling apart. “They all passed through here, just like you. They come. They leave. They die. And if you take one step outside that door, Doctor…”

Toriel looked up. The Doctor was shuffling through… a deck of cards? “No, that's not the right one,” he mumbled. Eventually, after flipping through each card, he set them back in his breast pocket. “Sorry. Cue cards—I've been told my bedside manner needs work.” He stood up. “So. You've had six human sacrifices, and you think I'll be the seventh.”

Toriel stood on her own feet, meeting the Doctor's gaze. “You don't know our king. Asgore…” she spat out the name as if it were an obscenity. It might as well have been one to her. “He is a demon. If by some miracle you make it past his Royal Guard, he'll tear your soul from your body with his own hands.”

“And he'll break the barrier. And you'll all be free.” The lines in the Doctor's face could have cut diamond. “Isn't that what you want?”

 _Isn't that what you want?_ Yes, of _course_ that's what she wanted, that's what _everyone_ wanted. It was the only thing anyone who lived in this forsaken prison wanted.

It was as if the Doctor knew exactly what was going through her head. With a grave voice, he replied, _“And that's what makes it all the more_ _terrible_ _._ Deep down, Toriel, have you ever thought—if Asgore kills his seventh sacrifice and breaks down the barrier, then all those other deaths will mean something? And if he never gets that last victim, then those six children you couldn't save—then their deaths will always be senseless? Nothing more than random acts of unkindness in a cruel and sadistic universe?”

“No! Of course not!” How could he say something so awful to her? How could he compare her to… _them?_ “ They were _children.”_

“Yes, you've established that.”

“They weren't _just_ children, though. Doctor, they were _my_ children. And no freedom could _ever_ justify what Asgore did to them.” A trembling note of rage crept into her voice.

“That's right. And if you show me the way out of here, I can make sure no others will die.”

“They'll kill you,” Toriel told him.

“They're welcome to try.”

Seeing the resolve—the _determination_ —in his eyes, Toriel knew that there was nothing she could do or say to keep the Doctor from leaving. Of course, all of the others had been like that. Nothing she could have done would have kept them safe, and she knew that. She'd _always_ known that. But there was something different about this man. He seemed to believe so completely in his own invincibility that Toriel almost believed it, too. And so, reluctantly, she dried her tears and led him down the basement corridor, toward the heavy stone door that closed off the ruins from the rest of monster society.

The door loomed ahead, the royal symbol—the three triangles under a winged circle comprising the Delta Rune—etched into the rough stone, its edges weathered and softened away. She tried one last time to dissuade him as she reached toward that door. Beyond it was a cemetery, and nothing the Doctor could say would allay her fears that he would add a mausoleum of his own to it. “I fear that, even if you survive… you will be forced to make an impossible decision.”

“Once, there was a wall between me and my TARDIS. Between me and my freedom. A _barrier_ , if you will. And the only other way through was something I just couldn't do. Twenty solid feet of super-diamond. Impenetrable to anyone with a shred of common sense.” He raised one hand and curled it into a fist. “I punched through it. It took me _four and a half billion years,_ but I won my freedom on my own terms.”

Toriel laughed in his face. “That's absurd!” Did he seriously expect her to believe that this twiggy old specimen of a human was _billions_ of years old? It was then that she realized: this poor old man may very well have been a genius, but he was bonkers. Stark raving mad. Psychotic. All the stories he'd told her must have been nothing but the fantasies of a lunatic. The Doctor wouldn't last five minutes outside the ruins.

Toriel stood in his way. “I am sorry, Doctor.” And as two orbs of lavender flames flickered to life in her curled paws, she felt a wave of _déjà vu_ wash over her. Here she was again, testing another human to see if they had what it takes to survive the cold and cruel reality of the underground, knowing that even if he _could_ make his way past her, he'd be killed by someone much stronger and much more ruthless.

The Doctor stood firm. “Put away the fire, Toriel.”

Toriel raised her arms, and a tongue of fire lashed out at the Doctor.

The Doctor stepped out of the way. “I won't fight you.”

“Prove to me you can survive out there.” She winged a fireball at his head. The Doctor ducked. “Prove to me—” Another fireball hit the corridor's wall and fizzled out, leaving a black mark on the stones. “That you're not just—” A stream of fire singed one of his eyebrows. “Another fragile— _Delusional—Human!”_

The Doctor grabbed her arm before Toriel could conjure another fireball and, with his free hand, reached into his jacket. He pulled out his spray bottle (Toriel hadn't even realized he had kept it with him) and sprayed a fine mist of water on her paws until the fur covering them was sopping wet.

Then he sprayed her in the face.

Toriel stumbled backwards in surprise, her back hitting the stone portal. She sneezed and rubbed the water out of her eyes. _He didn't just…_

The Doctor put the squirt bottle back into his jacket. “I'm sorry I had to do that.” He walked toward her and grabbed her by the wrist. “Now…” He led her paw to his chest, resting it first on the left side, and the right. “How many heartbeats?”

Toriel's brow furrowed. She could _feel_ two, but… that couldn't be right—humans only had one heart, right?

“You counted two, didn't you.”

“Y-yes…” _But that's impossible!_ “What… _what_ are _you?”_

The Doctor's face was still iron, his eyes fire. “I am the Doctor. And I… am a Time Lord.”

“I've never heard of a Time Lord.”

The Doctor's response sent a shiver down Toriel's spine. “Good.”

Toriel relented, pushing the door open. An icy wind blew through, showering both monster and Time Lord with frost. “There it is, Doctor. The world outside the ruins. I can see now that you have no need for my protection.”

The Doctor took a few steps out into the snowy forest, his shoes crunching on the ground.

“I do not know what you are capable of, Doctor,” Toriel continued. “But you have shown me that you… are somebody worth believing in.” She added, as almost an afterthought, “I still think it is impossible, though.”

The Doctor reached into his coat again. “Do you have a phone, Toriel?”

Toriel couldn't help but blush. “I think you can do much better than an old maid like me, Doctor…” But she pulled out her ancient cell phone anyway and handed it to the Doctor. He waved his little device over it, as if casting a spell on the phone. And, as he handed the phone back to her, the Doctor pressed a small metal object into Toriel's paw. A key.

“The barrier will fall, Toriel. And your people will be free. And if you don't get a call from me within the next twenty-four hours after that, I want you to go to where I fell down here. On the surface, just a few meters away, you'll find a blue wooden box, about the size of a phone booth. I know it sounds bizarre, but that's my TARDIS. You'll have to keep it safe for me. And… take care of Mr. Whiskers, if it comes to that.”

The Doctor walked off and vanished into the fog.

–

Two days later, the Barrier fell. And not even an hour after the news had reached the ruins, Toriel's phone began to ring. She didn't recognize the number. She scrambled to pick it up and slid the phone under her ear just as the voicemail message started playing. “Hello, this is Toriel.”

_“Hold on to the key for me, Toriel. I'll be back for it later.”_

Toriel's heart soared. _He did it._ And at that moment, with her soul filled with levity, she had an overwhelming desire to prank the Doctor. “I'm sorry I missed your call right now. Please leave a message after the beep.” The Doctor audibly groaned. “Beep.” Toriel suppressed a snicker.

 _“Yes, this is the Doctor, I'm leaving a message for a Ms. Toriel Dreemurr—yes, that's right, Toriel, I know—Just wanted to tell you I'll be coming back for that key whenever I get around to it. Keep it secret, keep it safe. I don't want some random yahoo running around with a key to my TARDIS, do you have any idea how small of a place the universe can be?_ _Feel free to call if you're ever in any danger, but be warned: I'm not your valet, or your Uber, and if you get drunk after trying to rekindle things with your ex, don't expect me to give you a ride back from the pub._ _”_

Toriel laughed.

_“Wow. The fake answering machine trick?”_

“My apologies, Doctor. I just could not help myself.”

The Doctor hung up in disgust.

He came back a few years later to pick up the key, apologizing for “overshooting”.

**Author's Note:**

> I just really needed to get this idea out of my system.


End file.
